President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has chastised ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo for his remarks about the Port Harcourt Petroleum Refinery in Rivers State.

Obasanjo recently told TheCable that he believes the country’s refineries will never function efficiently as long as they are owned by the government.

“Someone told me Tinubu said refineries would work by December. I told the person the refineries would not work. This is based on the information I received from Shell when I was president,” he had said.

But responding through Tope Ajayi, his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Tinubu said Obasanjo is not an engineer, therefore he shouldn’t make such comments.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, with due respect to him, is not an engineer. He’s not the engineer working at the refineries. So, the engineers and the NNPC gave the president a report and they have said that it will work by December this year,” he had said while speaking on Daily Trust space themed: ‘Analysing the First 100 Days of President Tinubu’.

We still have like four months to go. I will say that with all due respect to the former president, who is an elder statesman and our father, that what he said is his personal opinion and view. I will rather rely on the judgment of the engineers who are working at the refinery. So, I think we should wait until December.

President Tinubu stated in August that the Port Harcourt petroleum refinery would begin production in December 2023, following the completion of the ongoing rehabilitation contract between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the Italian firm, Maire Tecnimont SpA.

If completed as promised by Tinubu, the resuscitation of the refinery will reduce Nigeria’s reliance on oil imports and foreign refineries.

NNPCL stated that it has been working to renovate the refineries, which were completely shut down in 2021 and produced little or no fuel over the previous decade.